


Fourteen

by romanoffrights



Series: Birthdays With The Hargreeves. [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Birthday, Dysfunctional Family, Everyone Needs A Hug, Family Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, I Tried, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Maybe - Freeform, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, The Hargreeves Need A Hug, Underage Drinking, dont @ me on his bad writing, except reginald, i dont like luther
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 18:50:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17966105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanoffrights/pseuds/romanoffrights
Summary: The Hargreeves celebrate their fourteenth birthdays. The first without Five.





	Fourteen

•••

Ben woke up before the others on that faithful October First. 

Not because he was excited- hell, none of them were excited. Because Five had been missing for half a year now, they couldn't really be excited, Vanya was the last one with hope he would return, and hers was slowly dying as well. 

Ben wasn't sure why he woke up first. Or why he woke up at all. He was dreading today. He'd been dreading today all week. This was their first birthday without Five, and none of them were particulary thrilled about it.

Training would be cancelled, and maybe that was something to look forward to. But it wouldn't be the same. Ben knew that Allison and Klaus wouldn't be as excited as they were. The date had been approaching, and they'd all been on edge. Vanya hadn't said more than a few words in the past four days. Diego's stutter had gotten worse. The rest could barely focus on their training. 

Reginald didn't care. What a surprise. 

Ben wanted to go back to sleep. But it was 5:57, and there was no point. Grace would be entering his room in about three minutes.

So he sat and he waited.

Like predicted, Grace walked into his room almost exactly three minutes later.

"Good morning, Ben." She greeted, "Morning mealtime is soon. Be down in twenty minutes, please." 

Ben nodded, Grace smiled at him, and she moved onto Vanya's room.

Ben took a shaky, deep breath. Maybe Five was celebrating somewhere. Maybe Five was okay. Maybe he got away from this hellhole. 

Maybe.

But Five wouldn't just leave them like that. Not on purpose, at least.

Ben stood, and he began to get dressed.

It took him fourteen minutes.

•••

Soon enough, the six children were all sat at their respective seats. The table was more tense than normal, and anyone could pick up on that.

Grace wasn't an idiot. She knew what was going on. What her children were going through. They missed Five. Maybe some of them wouldn't admit it, but Grace knew. They wanted him here with them. 

Grace did too.

She had made pancakes for morning meal. They all liked pancakes, and it was better to go with something safe today.

She also had cookies in the oven, because cookies always helped when the kids were sad. Until they finished, she would stand at Reginalds side and wait.

Grace examined her kids carefully from where she was standing. Luther was eating, but he seemed out of it, like he was off some place far away.

Allison had barely touched her food. Moved around some of the fruit, and was staring at the plate below her.

Diego. He'd eaten the most so far, and was absentmindly carving something into the table with his knife. Something Grace couldn't see, but she would check it later, because she always did.

Klaus had a forced smile on his face. Grace didn't like it when Klaus had to force his smiles. It meant it was really bad. Because his smiled were always the most genuine. 

Ben had a book in his hands. Grace didn't know it, but said book was one Five has meant him before he disappeared. Ben didn't like the book, hence why he hadn't read it before, but he needed something to remind him of Five. He needed something to ground him.

Vanya was silent. She had been for four days, which was worrying Grace, but at least she was eating.

Grace stared at her children. She felt love. She felt pain.

Their pain.

She would make this okay. They needed her.

Reginald stood after ten more minutes and spoke briefly, "Training is cancelled. You may be excused." And then he walked away. 

The children began to stand, but Grace spoke before they could get to far into what they were doing, "No, sit. I have cookies for you all." She said, her

The kids shares a look as Grace ushered off to the kitchen, before sitting down.

"Everyone gets two," Grace spoke gently once she'd returned with her tray of desserts.

She passed them out to everyone. There were two left over.

No one said anything about that.

Grace stood near Reginald's seat. The silence was back. Had her cookies not worked?

Grace frowned deeply. Cookies always worked before. 

The children left, each disapearring to their rooms or something similar. 

Grace cleaned up. She stopped at where Diego had been sitting, reading what he'd carved into the table.

Five. Five. Five. Five. Five. Five.

Grace turned away. She ached with grief.

(The word has repeated fourteen more times. She'd counted.)

•••

Klaus retreated to his room, his smile fading as soon as he stepped inside, and he closed the door behind him. 

He locked it, taking in a deep breath. 

Klaus wandered over to his bed, and got down on his knees. He reached under the mattress, hands flailing around until-

Jackpot.

He pulled the expensive bottle of vodka out. It wasn't his. He didn't have the money for that . No, it was his father's. Klaus had managed to steal it, and he'd been saving it. Saving it for today.

Klaus sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the bottle of alcohol. 

He smiled sadly down at it. "You would've managed to find this." Klaus spoke quietly, as though he was speaking to a person, "Would've yelled at me, too. But you wouldn't snitch. You never did." He murmured, and his hands traced the letters on the bottle.

"I miss you, Five." Klaus said, voice cracking slightly, "We all do. You know, Vanya hasn't said anything in days. She misses you the most, I think." Klaus let out a bitter laugh.

"I know you're not dead." Klaus stated after a minute of silence, "I've tried contacting you. So many damn times." 

A single tear fell onto the glass bottle, and Klaus wiped at his eyes.

"Come back, Five. Please. We need you. You were the only one of us with any damn braincells." 

Another bitter, forced laugh.

And with that, Klaus opened the bottle, and took fourteen long sips.

•••

Luther found himself in his room, trying to focus on the pushups he was attempting to do. No training means he had nothing to do, and he needed to do something to get his mind off of things.

But it wasn't working, really. His mind was racing with thoughts.

Luther had been the first to give up hope of Five returning. Hell, it took barely a week.

Five and Luther had never been close- not as close as Five was with Ben or as Luther was with Allison. But it didn't make this any less hard. It felt off without the constant snarky remarks. Without the eyerolls. Without Five disappearing in a puff of blue whenever he found himself wasting time or bored.

It was rough without Five, is what he was saying. Their family was taking this hard, and Luther hated seeing them like this. He hated having something he couldn't fix.

Luther paused.

And he did 14 more pushups.

•••

Allison hated this.

She hated not having Five. She hated the constant worrying. She hated that she coudltn rumor him into coming back. She'd tried, she'd tried so many God damn times, but it never worked, and the lies remained lies.

And Allison hated it. She wanted her brother back. She wanted her family back to normal.

Or as normal as they could get.

She wanted to be excited for the upcoming birthdays. She wanted to be able to annoy her siblings with her excitement with Klaus. To be able to annoy Five, like she had beforehand.

She wanted everything to be okay again.

Allison wished she had the same hope Vanya had- the hope that Five would return and explain where he'd been. Maybe he'd apologize for being gone so long, even though Five had always been a stubborn little shit. Maybe he'd let them hug him until they couldn't feel their arms anymore. And then Grace could make them peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches, because that was always Five's favorite.

But Allison knew better than to slip into her little fantasy. Not again. 

So she blinked harshly and stared at the ceiling above her for a few minutes, before her eyes started to get droopy.

It took her 14 minutes to fall into a dreamless sleep. 

•••

Diego wanted to stab someone. Preferably Five.

Five wasn't supposed to leave them like that. Out of nowhere, for no reason. He wasn't supposed to disappear. He was supposed to be here with them, celebrating this stupid birthday and complaining over stupid.

Diego was angry. Extremely on edge. The smallest mishap could send him into a stuttering rage. 

He didn't care that they were 14. He didn't care about any of that bullshit. He was pissed, because being angry is better than being sad.

He missed Five. And it hurt. It hurt so damn much, and Diego didn't think He could keep this pain bottled up much longer. 

No one had moved Five's chair from the dinner table. As if he was going to come home randomly during a meal.

Sometimes Grace would set a plate of food there. Diego lost his appetite whenever she did that.

Diego shook the thoughts from his head ans stared down at the knife in his hand. He traced the handle.

Then he threw it at the wall. It lined up perfectly with the others he'd thrown.

He paused and took a shuddering breath. And then he threw another. Another. Another.

This cycle repeated until he'd thrown 14.

•••

Vanya was taking the whole situation the hardest, which wasn't much of a surpise to anyone.

She was hiding out in her bedroom. which was reallg more of a closet. She sat on her small mattress, staring at the violin in her hands.

Her eyes were glossy and red rimmed, but she'd stopped crying a while ago. She didn't know what she felt anymore.

Maybe it was disappointment. Or grief.

Maybe she was just numb, and all the pain had left.

She wished that was the case, but she wished for a lot of things. 

Vanya was slowly losing hope. Everyone else had given up, but Vanya was still clinging to the idea that maybe- maybe- Five would return. That's why she kept leaving the lights on, and why she kept making peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches before she went to bed.

In case Five came back.

But that remaining hope was dying off. Even so, she still left the sandwiches out. 

Vanya stood shakily, and she positioned her violin.

She stood there silently for a few minutes, before she started playing tune to the Birthday song that Grace used to sing when they were younger.

She messed up occasionaly, which probably had to due with her trembling hands. But she tried her hardest. 

When she finished, she placed her violin down slowly. 

A fresh flow of tears started. God, not again.

Her teardrops fell onto the musical instrument, and Vanya choked on a sob.

The female slid up against her wall, tears pouring faster now. Her breathing was rapid, her sobs desperate. Desperate for Five to return and maybe comfort her and she'd comfort him. Desperate for her father to actualky care and help them find their brother. Desperate for everything to just be okay.

Vanya let out another loud sob.

She cried. She cried until she couldn't anymore, until she was just letting out heaves.

It took nearly twenty minutes for her to calm down, for her to be able to breathe almost normally again.

And for the first time in four days, she spoke to no one in particular. She spoke in a voice that was rough from lack of use and crying. 

"Happy fourteenth birthday to us." She let said with a bitter laugh, head falling against the wall behind her, and she repeated herself, "Happy fourteenth birthday to the Hargreeves."


End file.
